Henry Kaiser's favourite gain pedal is the superbly harmonic fuzzy-drive Tech 21 NYC CompTortion

This is actually just my second Tech 21 pedal - long after I acquired my first - the RotoChoir Stereo Rotary pedal several years ago now which I still really rate. Henry reports how the CompTortion brings out the very best in all his guitars and reveals different hidden depths of character - where each guitar sounds distinctly different with this pedal too.

Readers will know that I’m a huge fan of ’Fuzzy-Drive’ and ’FuzzStortion’ pedals - and so when I learned that my good friend Henry’s favourite all-time gain pedal was a Fuzzy-Drive type - I just had to check this one out.

I understand it was launched all the way back in 1999 or thereabouts, and discontinued around 2018 - around about the same time that the various Tech 21 Character Series pedals were retired.

Controls - Level, Tone, Tortion (Dis-), Comp.

With it’s 4 dials it’s incredibly easy to operate and dial - you’re best off starting with Level and Tone at noon, and Triton and Comp fully CCW and then ramping up each one to taste.

For me it’s all about getting the ultimate breakup sound - the right degree of harmonic breakup alongside the texture of that breakup still being somewhat open-peered. Dial up the (Dis-)Tortion or Comp too much - and you will over-compress the output - which makes it denser and not as elegant or articulate.

For me the optimum settings are Level @ 3 o’c, Tone @ 4 o’c, Tortion @ 2 o’c, and Comp @ 10 o’c or thereabouts. There’s still a tiny degree of ’safecracker’ with the last two dials - and you will hear when you lock into peak harmonic texture.

The CompTortion is another classic and fairly unique pedal of its type - in combining both Distortion and Compression in the same pedal - while I believe this circuit can be improved further with a couple / few more controls - and a slightly more expansive EQ.

I’ve already recommended that my good friend Vitalii at Drunk Beaver do his own take of this circuit - at least for one of the future Pedal Drop batches. I think he would be perfect at tweaking that circuit in much the same way he did with his Bloom (Expandora) and Inglorious Bastard (Blues Breaker). I think he could make this great circuit even better - and obviously more pedalboard-friendly in a compact enclosure - with top-mounted jacks. I believe Tech 21 has always made great pedals, but their lack of keeping up with current trends in pedal development / evolution - and the growing popularity of compact enclosure pedals - led to the retirement of so many of its still classic and great sounding pedals - people just weren’t buying those any more!

It’s become particularly acute in recent years that in different classes - it’s the $99 and $199 Compact Enclosure pedals that are typically the best-sellers. Some of the bigger pedals will still appear above some of those in the sales charts - as their ticket prices are so much higher - and more often than not those charts are based on some very arbitrary sales values / amounts versus actually units shifted.

In any case it’s a little sad to see the CompTortion retired, while I believe it will return again in a much better, more versatile, and more wide-ranging circuit - but possibly from another brand!

For instance - it would be nice to have a saturation knob in their somewhere - so you can get more saturation without doubling down on the Compression and breakup density - which totally alters that sweet-spot character.

There have been mixed reactions to this pedal - largely I think due to mostly poor / inadequate demos - for in the right players’ hands the Tech 21 CompTortion can sound absolutely killer!

I’ve tried to pick out the best of the demos below :